Page 73 of After-Hours Heir

“No. I noticed more than that. I thought you seemed very bright. A worthy opponent.”

“Why did you go after the publishing company so hard?”

He looked down. “I chose it as a target. And I have never known how to back down from a battle. I wanted to acquire it, and I was willing to wait all that time to do it.”

“It was about the win, not about the company specifically.”

“Correct.” His voice got rough. “I’ve been fighting for so long. I don’t know how to lose. Even if…even if there are no stakes.Because everything feels like it has high stakes. It just…it still does.”

She pulled her foot from his grasp and turned so that she was leaning against the lip of the tub. She lifted her hand and touched his face. “It doesn’t here.”

“Sylvie,” he said his voice rough. “I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in mysterious forces at work in the universe. I’ve never believed in much of anything except my own grit. My own will to survive.”

“Who could blame you?”

“But why did you find my phone? Why did I drop my phone? I have never done that. Not once in all my life. How could that happen?”

“I believe in fate,” she said, holding his gaze, willing him to see just how she felt about him. Exactly how much she loved him. “And I believe I was supposed to find that phone. Something compelled me, something outside of myself, to send that text message so that you can get in touch with me.”

“Because you wanted me,” he said.

“I did,” she whispered. “I hated myself for it, but I wanted you.”

“And you still do. Even knowing me, you still do.”

He was so hungry for that. How could he not be? This man who had been sold for a pittance by his father. He would always be that boy. She could see that, clearly, painfully. He would always be that boy who hadn’t been loved enough.

She wanted him to feel how much she cared. She wrapped her arms around his neck and she kissed him, kissed him deep and long. He lifted her out of the tub, pressing her wet body against his fully clothed chest.

“You’re being ridiculous,” she said.

“All of it,” he said, pushing his hands through her hair. “It’s all like magic. And I don’t believe in magic. But I believe inyou, Sylvie Jones. You have given me something that I never imagined possible. I want… I need… I have always…” He kissed her, crushing her up against him.

He walked her into the bedroom. And just stood her in front of the mirror, his large frame behind her. “Look at you,” he said, tilting her chin up. The first thing she saw was how her body had changed. All of her flaws. Her breasts were bigger, her stomach distended, with silvery stretch marks moving across it. She looked tired.

“You’re a goddess,” he said. “There is nothing that can compare.”

And suddenly she realized that she wasn’t the only one engaging in acts of healing.

He was doing the same to her.

Yes, she had just thought about all the ways he had changed her. The ways that he had helped her see her own beauty. But there was something deeper about this. Something different.

“I wanted you then. I wanted you when you were an obstinate, angry woman yelling at me on the top floor of your publishing house. I wanted you when you were a soothing voice in my phone. I want you now. Like this. How were you made for me in all these different ways? I will never understand it. Because I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be standing here with you. I should be on an island in Greece. I should be six feet in the ground. Lost forever like so many of the other boys sold into that life. I should have become the same manner of monster as the man I fought in the end. I shouldn’t be here standing with you, but I am. We did not find each other at those publishing parties. We didn’t find each other in a boardroom. It took me losing my phone.”

It seemed like he was having a revelation. Like something was shifting inside of him.

He bent down and kissed her neck, his hand moving up to cup her breast, cover it. “Sylvie,” he whispered.

“I have wanted this for a long time.”

He bent her forward at the waist, and she gasped, grasping the edge of the vanity. She saw him behind her, looking intense. He undid his belt and freed himself.

She shivered with need.

If he could show her like this, then she would take it like this. If this was how he was going to show her the feelings that existed inside of him, then she wanted it.

She was desperate for him. Always.